Whether in the summer or in the off-season, there’s a queer magic to Provincetown that difficult to describe to someone who hasn’t yet visited, but allow me, someone who has been visiting P-town for 20 years, to give it the old college try. You can find that magic out in the streets, where—particularly during the summer, when tourism is at its peak—you will spot queer folks dressed (or undressed) in everything from bathing suits to sequined threads, weaving through throngs of day-trippers and families of all kinds, whether biological or chosen, while drag queens hand out flyers for their shows.
On top of that, the local, independent, and LGBTQ+-owned businesses in the area give Provincetown its unique character: Queen Vic Guest House Provincetown on Commercial Street boasts perhaps the best people-watching spot in town (plus sneaky, delicious martinis). The Tin Pan Alley restaurant and lounge just expanded their offerings to include a drag night in the off-season, plus nightlife spot Red Room is hosting weekend events that include drag craft nights and trivia to tide locals and guests over until the high season. Casual beachfront restaurant The Canteen is the home for perfect afternoon hangouts over lobster rolls and frosé. Clothier SAULT brings a preppy New England counterpoint to the irreverent, ironic threads sold at newly-opened Butch. Gifford House, with its long and storied past, is part of that guard of indie businesses working to foster and protect that sense of queer sanctuary in Provincetown.
Built in 1868, Gifford House is a stately faded yellow beauty at the top of Carver Street—up a hill from the bustling bars and night clubs of Commercial Street, the town’s main drag. It used to be the last stop on the horse-drawn stagecoach line that connected outer Cape Cod with the rest of the state, and once hosted famous guests like Theodore Roosevelt, who visited in 1907 to place the ceremonial cornerstone of the town’s iconic 252-foot granite tower, the Pilgrim Monument. As town changed—it’s been a Portuguese enclave, an arts colony, a place for men with AIDS to find compassionate care during the ends of their lives—Gifford consistently offered a chance for queer folks to escape the less accepting world beyond, even if only for a summer week.
Before Azar, the owner was Jim Foss, who purchased Gifford in 1994 and ran it with his husband, Harvey Wilson. In addition to its small, affordable rooms, a large draw of Gifford was that its basement housed Purgatory, one of the nation’s oldest leather bars. Guests didn’t really stay at Gifford House to enjoy a sleepy Cape Cod getaway (it was hard to have an early night when music from Purgatory thrummed up through the wood structure of the hotel until 1 a.m.)—but to be a part of the action.